Power to Cooperate (Revision) – Part 2…

Hi EveryOne,

That time of month already to check in with each and every one of you to see how this Power is serving you. Are you using this power to help make some positive change within your life –  thus helping others to make positive change in theirs?… You’re not rationalising any resistance are you? Did you know that there’s a fine line between cooperation and colluding? You see, cooperating doesn’t always mean to say yes, in many instances to cooperate means having the courage to say no (with a loving heart)! Unfortunately, cooperation (like many of our other amazing powers) are still seen as weak and passive by many, hence the struggle in applying them in our life. But if we are to use them to help us truly transform our lives then we need to start recognising them for what they truly are – our strengths! If we find ourselves cooperating with others out of mere compulsion or the inability to say no, lets pat ourselves on the back for that recognition. Let us then use our many other powers – like courage, tolerance, love, discernment, humility (to name a few) to help us transform colluding (a weakness) into cooperation (a strength).  Remember cooperation, like all our powers, start within. Unlike our weaknesses (which may appear internal) but are all borne via external stimuli 🙂

Questions to churn on:

– How do I see cooperation – as passive or as a strength?

– How can cooperation help transform my life?

– When do I cooperate and when do I enable someone else’s bad behaviour?

Lesson: Cooperation isn’t just to serve others, it’s about serving ourselves as a means to serve others. If we serve others at the detriment of our own wellbeing, then cooperation becomes passive and turns into resentment. Cooperation doesn’t mean to simply agree with what others say or do (especially if what they say or do is hurtful) for to cooperate in that case would mean to collude and enable someone else’s bad behaviour.

Here are 10 quotes to help you understand cooperation from different angles. Hope it helps somewhat 🙂

1. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good – Mahatma Gandhi

2. Nature is based on harmony. So if we want to survive and become more like nature, then we actually have to understand that it’s cooperation versus competition – Bruce Lipton

3. Put yourself in the other man’s place and then you will know why he thinks certain things and does certain deeds – Elbert Hubbard

4. Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean –

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

5. Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself – Bertrand Russell

6. We can hope that men will understand that the interest of all are the same, that hope lies in cooperation. We can then perhaps keep PEACE – Alva Myrdal

7. If you want to be incrementally better: Be competitive. If you want to be exponentially better: Be cooperative – Source Unknown

8. The cooperation of the two retina in one field of vision, whatever is its cause, must rather be the source of all the ideas to which single or double vision may give rise – Johannes P. Muller

9. Where there is a will there is a way. And this must be the way, not of compulsion but of cooperation… No government and no plan can succeed without it – Lionel Murphy

10. We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now – Martin Luther King Jnr.

Lots of love Annemarie… Thank you to those who have already contributed – I look forward to receiving more of your contributions 🙂